Low dimensional travelling interfaces in coupled map lattices

We study the dynamics of the travelling interface arising from a bistable piece-wise linear one-way coupled map lattice. We show how the dynamics of the interfacial sites, separating the two superstable phases of the local map, is finite dimensional and equivalent to a toral map. The velocity of the travelling interface corresponds to the rotation vector of the toral map. As a consequence, a rational velocity of the travelling interface is subject to mode-locking with respect to the system parameters. We analytically compute the Arnold’s tongues where particular spatio-temporal periodic orbits exist. The boundaries of the mode-locked regions correspond to border-collision bifurcations of the toral map. By varying the system parameters it is possible to increase the number of interfacial sites corresponding to a border-collision bifurcation of the interfacial attracting cycle. We finally give some generalizations towards smooth coupled map lattices whose interface dynamics is typically infinite dimensional.